02.23.07
How much privacy do we have left and who’s allowed to violate that privacy?
There was an article on The Register today regarding the former judge who's been sentenced to 27 months in prison for possession of child pornography. This, in itself, may not be overly newsworthy... Another scumbag went down and the story would be over normally but this story is different. This conviction spawned from the determination of one computer "hacker" to work to stop child porn and child abuse. It's also a story that raises plenty of moral and ethical concerns.
The evidence in this case surfaced via a trojan that was posted to news groups by the hacker, who's handle is Omni-Potent, and downloaded by some 3000 perverts and pedophiles. He then monitored the actions of these individuals and at varying points turned information over to the authorities.
Now a comment was made on my Windows XP Black Edition post and the author of that comment was fairly certain it was against the law in Canada to place malware on a persons machine. If this is true than Omni-Potent has a) violated the law and should be arrested and b) anything he turned over to the authorities is most likely invalid. That's not to say I think that the perverts and pedophiles should be getting away with what they are doing, and I've seen it mentioned, in regards to this issue, the ends justify the means. The problem is, where do you draw the line?
I told this story to my fiance and asked her what she thought of the issue. She said that it was fine because of what the former judge was doing... so I asked her if she'd want people watching everything she did online and her comment was, "No, but I'm not doing anything wrong." My response was along the lines of, "They won't know that until they've already watched" and all she could say was, "Oh, I wouldn't want that"..
Sure it's great that another scumbag is locked up but where do we draw the line on the violation of privacy? I don't think you can say they crossed the line so it's ok because you don't know they've crossed the line until you've violated their privacy and I, personally, don't want my privacy being violated just so someone can "check and see if I'm breaking the law". Another argument could be made that the judge had downloaded the trojan which was placed on a newsgroup known for pedophilia. This is true but how many home computers have malware on them already that's accessing illegal information such as this... Do those people deserve to be monitored because of something on their computer that they are unaware of?
There's also the fact that this was done internationally and that if a civilian can get away with this, what can your own government get away from. Who draws the line on who can and cannot monitor your daily computer usage... on who can violate your privacy and when it's ok to have your privacy violated. To me this raises a great deal of concern on the issue of personal privacy and what other individuals are allowed to monitor without fear of punishment.
